At which 1916 battle was J.R.R. Tolkien serving as a British Army signals officer?

J.R.R. Tolkien was serving as a British Army signals officer during the Battle of the Somme.

Tolkien served with the Lancashire Fusiliers during the First World War and went to France in 1916. He participated in the Somme offensive, one of the war’s largest and bloodiest campaigns.

He became ill with trench fever and was sent back to England in October 1916. The experience of the war, including the loss of many close friends, influenced the emotional atmosphere and imagery of his later writing.

The Somme was fought from 1 July to 18 November 1916. Tolkien’s military role involved communications rather than commanding troops in the way some simplified accounts suggest. His wartime experience is often discussed alongside the landscapes of Mordor, although Tolkien rejected one-to-one allegorical readings of his fiction.